Privacy policy

What we store

When you create an account we store what you give us:

• Your email address, used to sign in, verify and reset your password
• Your username and display name, both public
• Your avatar, bio and location, if you fill them in
• The language you choose for the interface

If you apply to become a creator, we also store:

• Your legal name, date of birth and address
• The phone number you verified
• Your two-factor authentication secret, encrypted at rest
• Your answers to the application questionnaire and your message to the reviewer
• Which version of the Creator Terms you accepted, and when

Only you and our administrators can see these; they are never shown publicly. Your creator profile and everything you publish, on the other hand, is public by design.

Signing in with Google

If you sign in with Google, we receive your email address, name and profile picture, along with an account identifier.

That identifier is stored so we recognise you next time, and it never leaves our servers — it appears in no response sent to a browser. We ask for no other access to your Google account and receive none.

Reading statistics

Creators need to know whether anyone reads their work, so we count views. The method is designed not to need to know who you are.

Each view is recorded as a hash, made from a secret key, that day's date, and your account — or your IP address if you are not signed in. The view record keeps only the hash, not the account or the address. Because the date is part of the hash, the same reader hashes differently tomorrow — so this column cannot be used to follow somebody over time.

One view is counted per reader, per post, per day. An author re-reading their own post is not counted.

To know how many visits the site gets overall and where readers arrive from, we use Cloudflare Web Analytics. It sets no cookie and stores nothing in your browser, and does not use your IP address or browser details to identify you; it gives us totals only, such as which pages were viewed and which sites sent readers here. When a page loads, your browser sends one request to Cloudflare's servers.

To stop accounts made by robots, the sign-up, sign-in and password recovery pages use Cloudflare Turnstile. It checks your browser for a moment, usually without you doing anything, and sets no advertising cookie.

If you agree, we also use Google Analytics to understand how readers use the site: which pages are viewed, where people go next, what devices they use, and actions such as searching, signing up, liking or saving a post, following a creator or publishing. These are recorded with the post's id or the creator's public username and, for a search, the words searched — never your email, name or anything else you type. Before you agree, your browser loads nothing from Google and sends nothing there. Google Analytics' advertising signals stay off even when you agree.

We set no advertising trackers.

Cookies

When you sign in, we set two cookies, and both are removed when you sign out:

• Your sign-in session cookie. It is marked httpOnly, which means script running on the page cannot read it.
• A cookie holding only the value "1", which tells the page you are signed in so it renders correctly from the start. It holds no credential and nothing that identifies you.

If you are not signed in and have not accepted statistics cookies (below), we set no cookies at all.

If you press "Accept" in the question about statistics cookies, Google Analytics sets `_ga` and `_ga_…` cookies to recognise your browser across visits, for up to 2 years. Your choice is kept in your browser's storage (not a cookie, and never sent to our server). Press "Cookie settings" at the bottom of any page to change your mind; declining deletes those cookies.

The short-lived access token is held in browser memory only and disappears when you close the tab. We set no advertising or behavioural cookies.

Embedded video

Some posts embed video from YouTube or Vimeo. When you open such a post, your browser loads the player directly from them, and that request carries your IP address to their servers. This is outside our control.

We reduce it in two ways: YouTube is embedded through the domain that does not set tracking cookies, and Vimeo is asked not to track. The frame loads only when you scroll to it, so if you never reach the video, no request is made.

Email we send

We send email only when there is a reason:

• To verify your address when you register
• To reset your password when you ask

We send no marketing email, and we do not sell or rent your address.

How long we keep things

• In-app notifications delete themselves after 90 days
• Sign-in sessions expire and are removed automatically
• Email verification and password reset codes expire within hours to a day
• View records are kept, because they are the only record that a post was read, and they identify nobody
• Creator applications are kept after review, rejected ones included, so you can read the reason and a later application is reviewed in context
• Server logs record errors and security events, such as a failed sign-in or an IP address sending too many requests. They are overwritten as they reach a size limit and are used only to run the service and defend it

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct or delete your personal data. Most profile information you can change yourself inside your account.

For anything else, email us under the "Your data" topic on the contact page. We will tell you what we can and cannot do — a post you published publicly, for instance, may already have been saved or quoted by others.

Third parties

We use a small number of providers to operate:

• Google, for sign-in and for place data
• An image storage and delivery provider
• An email delivery provider
• Cloudflare, for site-wide visit statistics and the anti-robot check
• Google Analytics, only if you accept statistics cookies
• An SMS provider, to send phone verification codes to creators
• A hosting and database provider

We do not sell personal data to anyone.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the date at the top of the page changes with it. For significant changes we will tell account holders.

Related pages

Contact · Terms · About